Volaris

They've been doing these free plans a lot lately. Before they weren't as good as the 1000/1000/1000 offer, but they must finally be getting money to afford such. Below are the add-ons you can buy. Fairly priced. I imagine Sprint is charging MVNOs less than that to use their network.

Some articles are saying Dish chose to give up licenses where AT&T and T-Mobile were the second highest bidders since they're aiming for a deal with Verizon. If AT&T and T-Mobile bids don't reach the prices Dish agreed to pay, Dish will have to pay the difference.

The bottom looks like T-Mobile 700MHz LTE. Is this the tower next to 43? I'm pretty sure the Sprint tower is on the other side of town on Whitley near 7th (check the sponsor maps to confirm location).

This is an amazing point I did not add to my post above. Completely agree. Even right now, 700MHz's speculators have been put on notice, knowing that T-Mobile will get a good chunk of 600MHz without Sprint competing against them. That may cause some of them to sell sooner to T-Mobile rather than keep making interest payments on their loans.

From a consumer's point of view, I'm very happy with Sprint's decision. Remember, for consumers to benefit, both T-Mobile and Sprint need to be strong so they can successfully compete and be profitable. A few points: T-Mobile needs 600MHz more than Sprint. Both for capacity (they don't have tons of 2.5GHz) and low band reasons (their 700MHz isn't nationwide like Sprint's 800MHz). To their credit, T-Mobile is also expanding outside their native coverage quicker to compete against Verizon and AT&T. 600MHz will but more pressure on those two. Profitability. T-Mobile is profitable and has said it's predicting profits from here on. They can afford to add debt. They have less debt than Sprint. Sprint on the other hand, has burned up over $50 billion in the last few years and counting. Sprint's most important goal right now is to become profitable. Adding ~$10 billion in debt to win in this auction would not help Sprint become profitable. Sprint needs to focus on 2.5GHz densification. It's where their capacity and speed lies. 800MHz can be used as a last resort band. If 800MHz gets congested, better off to densify in that area (which helps improve coverage!). For those of you still thinking T-Mobile and Sprint will eventually merge... Sprint's decision will save money for both. Sprint because they won't have to take on new debt at high interest (T-Mobile's credit rating is better), and by not competing against each other, T-Mobile will be able to acquire 600MHz cheaper in most markets.

Someone had a similar experience and fixed it by going to Settings, General, Accessibility, VoiceOver, Speech, Dialect, and re-selecting an option there. Thread: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7221143

In the Siri -> Voice Feedback settings, is it set to Always?

Yeah that change was confusing, but I'm getting used to it now.

Sprint is in last place for nearly every single category in all the SoCal RootMetrics market reports. It might be ok in select areas, but as a visitor, I've found Sprint in SoCal surprisingly poor for being the second largest market in the nation. To the point where I've had to ask family members to use their AT&T/T-Mobile phone when I've been the lost driver with non-working data. In rural 800MHz LTE sites, I've found it can outdo 1900MHz EVDO (in one case, solid for 10 miles from the tower). But those can probably just be blasted at full power since rural Sprint towers are spaced far apart. I imagine fine tuning 800MHz LTE in cities to avoid interference is a difficult process, and even then, they might choose to keep it slightly underpowered to prevent such interference since 800MHz signal can travel quite far. I feel 800MHz in combination with small cells/densification will ultimately deliver a top tier network in my market and SoCal. We've seen similar with Verizon, their 700MHz LTE still had a few 3G holes here and there, so they've been adding small cells to cover them and add capacity. I feel Sprint will do similar, and as we've seen in select markets, ultimately prevail. I'm just hoping the densification build out is quick.

I imagine that's just coverage spillover from a tower east of it. Glad to hear you got some LTE on Sunday - Corcoran really needs it. 3G is so slow there. It's also nice to see that Spark coverage on the coverage maps is much more realistic than before.

According to the article from the newspaper / Fresno Bee, building another flagpole is another option (that SBA seems to have proposed), but that would require SBA to buy more land and residents don't want any other poles near the flag as it would detract from Clovis' single most iconic feature. http://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/article32605071.html Seems like that flag is serious business in Clovis, and SBA is responsible for it. In comparison, nobody said a thing in Hanford when our biggest flag on our busiest intersection was bulldozed to make space for a CVS parking. (where Valley Ford used to be) I agree that that tower is really important; it sits next to Fresno State University. I wonder, if it already has 1900MHz/800MHz equipment, would just building Spark small cells work too? That would allow Sprint to bring 2.5GHz coverage and capacity closer to where the students/shoppers/users are located. There's only about a billion street light poles available for that in that area.

Clovis rejects Sprint/SBA plan to upgrade cell tower. American flag wins. Residents did not like idea of removing flag or keeping the flag with a fatter upper tower portion. http://abc30.com/politics/hedricks-chevrolet-wins-fight-to-keep-american-flag-flying-for-now/959121/ Think they were trying to add Spark equipment?

It'll work fine on T-Mobile, AT&T, and their MVNOs. T-Mobile uses 1900MHz for both 2G and their 3G/4G HSPA+ network, while AT&T uses both 850MHz and 1900MHz for both 2G and 3G/4G HSPA+. 1700MHz 3G isn't that important for T-Mobile nowadays, they shifted that to 1900MHz to make space for LTE - in some markets 1700MHz 3G has been completely shut off. As noted above, s/he will just have to edit the data/MMS APN settings so data and picture messaging works well.

Has it improved any since you posted this? I was wondering if it hasn't been optimized or something. Oddly Sprint's maps haven't been updated to show LTE (they were pretty good at including new LTE areas quickly before). I was in Kerman yesterday and was surprised I couldn't get LTE inside the Valley Food shopping center (across McDonalds). I was expecting better from 800MHz LTE. Hopefully it's an optimization quirk can be easily tuned.

It's on Clear's website: http://www.clear.com/coverage Not sure how much longer that will last - I'm surprised it's still online. Take a look at a big market like LA or NYC and you'll see a dense amount of Clear towers. Fresno and Bakersfield weren't Clear markets so they only seem to have one spectrum protection site.

Yeah, 800MHz LTE is going to make a massive difference, especially before densification. Visalia (and Merced for that matter) is a very lucky city in the Central Valley. Being a Clear market, they have a dense grid of towers. If they're converted to full Sprint sites (with band 25, 26, 41) Sprint will have a network as dense as T-Mobile's in those cities. And in my opinion both cities need them, and would allow Sprint to easily have the fastest network there. Visalia Clear locations: Merced Clear locations (huge difference, considering this city of 80+k is mostly covered by 2 Sprint towers):

As Josh mentioned, Visalia is part of Tulare County so no 800MHz LTE for them. I haven't seen it in Hanford (Kings County) either - would help a ton. As for your mom's place, Sensorly shows you should get LTE there, at least outside. Perhaps try flipping airplane mode on and off? In areas where you only get 1X800 (as in, only that, not even 3G) then you won't get LTE. That's because 1X800 is the strongest signal. This is most common on rural roads far from Sprint towers because Sprint has a sparse network around here. In my experience, from strongest to weakest: 1X800 800MHz 4G LTE 1900MHz 3G EVDO 1900MHz LTE

I noticed Kettleman City (at I-5 and CA-41) has LTE now. Went to LA this weekend and decided to test the range of the tower while there. I was driving with family so I didn't check if it had band 26, but I assume yes because from the tower (in Kettleman City) I counted 10 full miles of LTE signal driving south on I-5. That's the longest range LTE tower I've experienced - nothing like the short range 1900MHz LTE towers in Hanford. Signal was also very stable - gradually went thru 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 bars without any fluctuations. After the 10 miles, the 1 LTE bar lasted very shortly and the phone switched to 5 bars of 1X... and eventually no service. Way much 1X on I-5 - hopefully they add a few towers here and there to provide a solid LTE experience in the future. I was in southern LA for two days and unfortunately had too much sluggish 3G indoors and outdoors in random spots of towns - could definitely tell it was an area without 800MHz LTE. I was not a happy camper when I was bored and my 9gag (or worse yet, driving directions) would take an eternity to load. Where LTE, though, speeds were fine. Can't wait to have 800MHz LTE everywhere., especially now that I see it can match or beat EVDO range.

I have an unlocked Sony Xperia ZL that just received Lollipop. Sony makes nice phones - shame they don't sell that well. I've always liked their minimal UI, displays, and cameras.

Indoor LTE coverage is also lousy in Hanford even in stores within 1 mile radius of the tower - all towers only have 1900MHz LTE and not 800MHz LTE. Band 26 can't come soon enough! An update on the 3G downtown Merced flagpole tower at Costco - I noticed they pulled the flag and cover out, so the Sprint/T-Mobile antennas were exposed. Surprised that the antennas weren't located at the top. Equipment didn't look new, but at least they're starting to do something.

Damn, you're right: http://www.spectrummonitoring.com/frequencies/frequencies2.html#Mexico Additionally that makes it look like Iusacell only owns 850MHz in the southern portion of Mexico, which matches what a Fierce article said. 10x10 and 5x5 PCS, though. Nextel has 15x15 800MHz SMR and 15x15 AWS.

Yeah, Iusacell and Nextel both have poor rural coverage. If AT&T wants to compete they'll have to improve the network to at least match Movistar coverage. It's the reason why they have so few customers. For current and future reference, here are some Mexican coverage maps: Telcel - the largest network in coverage and customer size: Movistar - second largest network in coverage and customers: PDF file: http://www.movistar.com.mx/documents/10184/21525/Cobertura_Movistar_IFT_Voz_v2.pdf/171f486a-d1e0-4820-b510-07988a4b9197 Google Map: http://www.movistar.com.mx/descubre/cobertura Iusacell - much of their coverage is spotty/non-continuous. Zoom out and pan around Mexico to see: http://www.iusacell.com.mx/cobertura/ Nextel - their coverage isn't as continuous as it looks, especially with 800MHz iDEN sites blasting 1700/2100MHz for HSPA+ and LTE: I don't think AT&T has much of a choice. Might as well switch to band 26 LTE in both Mexico and the US to keep phones similar. Telcel, Movistar, and Iusacell all own some 850MHz (band 5 LTE) spectrum, so I doubt they can do more than a 5x5 HSPA+ here. That's important because many Mexicans cannot afford LTE phones yet. Then they'd be able to run 5x5MHz LTE using SMR band 26 LTE. Considering a large percentage of Mexicans (both in the US and Mexico) use their phones as their only or main Internet source, it's imperative for AT&T to have good data (HSPA+ and/or LTE) in low frequency bands for good indoor coverage, unless they want to densify. LTE can't match the coverage of 2G or HSPA+; it's amazing how far Telcel/Movistar 1900MHz signal travels from towers on hills/mountains. Additionally, in Mexico there will be no 700MHz auction - they're building a fourth nationwide LTE network using 90MHz of 700MHz spectrum, which will be wholesale only. So unless they want to use that network for LTE, AT&T will have to use whatever 850/800MHz spectrum they have to power both HSPA+ and LTE.

Nextel Mexico runs an 800MHz iDEN and AWS HSPA+ network. Now that AT&T has bought them, they'll take that AWS (band 4) spectrum and use it for LTE, which will fit in nicely with Iusacell's and AT&T's spectrum. But again, it's going to take major investment into Mexico's network to get them to compete against Telcel (America Movil) and Movistar (Telefonica). Both Iusacell and Nextel are tiny in terms of network coverage area and customers compared to Telcel and Movistar. At the very least they should focus on achieving a Sprint-like urban + highway coverage area to reduce their roaming on Movistar. Recently Carlos Slim (Telcel) spun off his towers into a different company (due to competition concerns), so this may make it significantly easier for AT&T to expand coverage... just lease space on towers that Telcel and Movistar already use. Backhaul on the other hand... I've noticed they use a lot of microwave backhaul down there.

The sound is an improvement, but it's nowhere as 'HD' as it should be. It's kinda like satellite radio. Same goes for range. The signal is weaker than the analog signal, so it sometimes cuts off. Overall though, if you live in a major metro or near the antennas, I'm guessing it should be an improvement (plus a few more stations). ^And OMG to the post above. It would drive me crazy when stations wouldn't properly sync their analog and HD broadcast, especially in my rural area. The hand offs were very annoying to where I'd have to disable HD radio.

Straight Talk / Net10 throttle to 64Kbps once your data is used up. It doesn't matter how fast or what network (2G, 3G, 4G, LTE, etc) you used up the first 500Mb on - after that it's throttled to 64Kbps. SOME people on HF have reported that they sometimes aren't accurate with when the throttle kicks in. Keep an eye on it. In the future, I recommend just going to Cricket if you need prepaid AT&T service. More data, more reliable, faster throttle. (128Kbps) Alternatively, Straight Talk sells data only (tablet) sim cards at Walmart (they can be used in phones). $15 for 1GB or $25 for 2GB over 30 days, or $40 for 4GB over 60 days. Can choose AT&T or T-Mobile. If T-Mobile is an option, you can consider a T-Mobile hotspot or USB modem; Harbor Mobile sells 5GB of data for $15 plus tax each month ($18 total?). Once Sprint fixes the network in your area, you can also consider Freedompop - but you probably have a lot more data on your Sprint service? Anywho, don't waste your data on Speedtests. Fast speeds drains your data quickly.